


Merely a Madness...

by cup_of_earl_gray



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Genre: Angst and Feels, Best Friends, Character Study, Drinking, Friends With Benefits, Homoromantic, IWWV - Freeform, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Shakespeare Quotations, Smoking, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:33:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cup_of_earl_gray/pseuds/cup_of_earl_gray
Summary: James fell in love with Oliver hard and fast and all at once. But he'd never been a stranger to forbidden love; after all, what was more poetic than that?~An exploration of James Farrow and his misadventures in love, from his first crush, to his first kiss, to his first love.
Relationships: James Farrow/Alexander Vass, James Farrow/Oliver Marks, James Farrow/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	Merely a Madness...

James fell in love with Oliver hard and fast and all at once on a July night in the sands of Del Norte, reading from a tattered copy of _Pericles_ Oliver had stuffed in his suitcase for his flight out West three nights before. Two years of friendship went flying out the window as James glanced over from his reading to find Oliver’s doe eyes looking back at him, eyelashes fluttering across his face as the waves crashed around them and blocked out every other thing in the world. Crumbs from their potato chips lay stuck to Oliver’s bottom lip, forgotten two scenes ago, and James felt the intrusive urge to wipe them away with his thumb, just to feel Oliver beneath his touch. Or worse, to capture that lip with a kiss and take those salty crumbs for himself. But James swallowed hard and bit back the urge. 

“You got... uh... something…” James mumbled, gesturing to his own mouth. Oliver blinked for a second, almost not registering the words until he smiled and brushed the back of his hand against his lips.

“Oh,” he blushed, “Thanks.”

It was at that moment, James felt the soul-crushing weight of blind, savage love settle itself in his chest.

Combined with the heartbreaking reality that Oliver Marks did not feel the same way.

~

The truth was, James had known he liked boys since high school. His father had made the mortifying mistake of sending him to an all-boys boarding school in Northern California, claiming to his fourteen-year-old son that he was lucky to go to such an institution and _think about it, James, all good stories start in boarding schools! It’s poetic!_ But James had been taught to read through the lines: he was being sent away so Professor Farrow wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. 

James had desperately wanted to protest, citing Dickens and Austen, even as his father spouted back Bronte and Forster and refused to send him to any other school. So in September of 1990, Professor Farrow drove his son up to school and promptly threw him into four years of chaos.

James had survived well enough those first few months. He did well in classes, kept his head down, and tried his best not to give his feelings any weight when he caught sight of his classmates in the showers. It wasn’t until January and the announcement for the spring production that things started to spiral towards an inevitable end.

 _Julius Caesar._ Shakespeare. “They always do Shakespeare,” James’s advisor told him upon inquiry, “Just not the romances. Doesn’t read well with a bunch of hormonal boys.”

But... Shakespeare. James had read every one of the 154 sonnets, and even more of the speeches at his father’s suggestions and they had quickly become his favorite poetry in the whole house. Perhaps it was the way the words floated off his tongue when he spoke them allowed in the bathroom mirror, mouth full of toothpaste and metaphors. Maybe it was the ideas they had set in his brain, full of fair youths and summer days, so lovely and so temperate. Or maybe it was simply the thrill he got when he could decipher the ancient language in a matter of seconds - like he was the only person in the world who knew exactly what Shakespeare was thinking and meaning and feeling, all from reading combinations of typeface letters on thin, delicate paper in the deafening quiet of his father’s study.

In any case, James knew he’d have to audition. Hell if he didn’t know the first thing about acting; he knew the feeling, and that was what mattered. 

He wasn’t good. Not at first. He stumbled over the words, the turns of phrases turning around so tightly in his mouth that they all tangled up into one another. But his heart was in it, even if it wouldn’t stop thumping against his chest at the thought of all those eyes watching him. _And_ he was pretty. Even the director could see that. And they always needed pretty boys to play the women.

Portia was a good enough role, his advisor told him. Even if it’s only one scene and even if he has to play a girl... it’s acting! It’s a challenge. James had never been one to back away from a challenge. 

But it didn’t help that James’s Lord Brutus was _him_. A senior, an experienced actor, and a charismatic, honor-roll, head-of-class to boot. With auburn hair and soft brown eyes and cheekbones that could slice through metal, James’s Brutus was every he had hoped to avoid. 

And he was nice. Infuriatingly so. His Brutus greeted him in the halls as _gentle Portia, good Portia_ , smiled encouragingly when James messed up his lines, and always asked him if he was all right during rehearsals. _It’s all right_ , he would coax when James could feel his breathing go short, _You can talk to me. I just want to make sure you’re okay._

When dress rehearsals came and James found himself in a flowing white mess of a skirt that constantly got tangled around his feet and could feel himself growing redder and redder with embarrassment, his Brutus had found him and no trace of a laugh met his lips.

“Here, let me,” he had said, pinning the fabric expertly into place at James’s shoulders. “Do you want help with the makeup?”

Janes nodded _of course_ because he had no idea how any of it worked. His mother had never put in the effort to wear any since her breakdown and James didn’t have any siblings or cousins who he would have watched. He suddenly wished he had thought to study it for homework: Math, Biology, _makeup_ , then English. That way he wouldn’t have to worry about the senior boy, so charismatic, so charming, touching his face and staring at him with those eyes. 

“It’s weird, right?” His Brutus asked as he painted red circles on James’s soft porcelain cheeks and smudged the color into his skin. James nodded, barely perceptible, not wanting to interrupt the spell-bounding ritual. “I thought so too. They made me play Ophelia my first year. _Hamlet_. It was mortifying. But... I actually ended up having a lot of fun. And I learned a lot about makeup. Which gets you a lot of points with the girls. My girlfriend is incredibly jealous that I can do eyeliner better than her, but she secretly loves it. Close your eyes.”

James complied and tensed when he felt the cool swipe of liquid drawing across his lid. 

“You know,” his Brutus continued, “Back in Shakespeare’s time, all the parts were played by men. Even the women.”

“I know,” James replied, not knowing what else to say. But he desperately wanted to show how much he knew so he added hastily, “Until 1661, when it became legal for women to act. But even then, society...”

He trailed off as the sounds of heartwarming laughter reached his ears.

“Well, aren’t you the little Shakespeare scholar,” his Brutus teased. “Open. Back at me.”

His Brutus tipped James’s head back and forth, a smile growing on his lips.

“Beautiful.” He patted James’s cheek, already leaving to get himself ready. “Break a leg.”

That night, after a fever dream of a scene, James feeling suddenly more like Portia than he had ever before, wishing for his Brutus to see him and tell him everything he ever thought every day, after a whirlwind of post-production changing and wiping off makeup and notes, after a long trek back to his dorms, James lied in bed, fully awake, his chest aching for the touch of his Brutus’s soft hands on his face once more, the graze of his lips against the back of his hand, and in a moment of blind intrusiveness, another’s tongue in his own mouth. 

But as soon as that image flashed across his mind, James bolted up, fire crawling on every inch of his skin. He felt like Macbeth suddenly. _Is this a dagger which I see before me…_ There was something - A feeling? An identity? An image? - something that he desperately wanted to reach out and grab and keep for himself, but… he shouldn’t. No, daggers led to murder. And this path led to something dangerous, too. 

Besides even if he wanted to, it was just an illusion, wasn’t it?

~

“You like boys, don’t you?”

James startled and looked up from his homework. He was deep in a paper about the history of the Globe Theater when a cutting voice drew him out of his stride. He stopped writing mid-word to look up.

A boy with dark black curls and pointed features smirked down at him. James recognized him from the hall he lived on and the classes they shared: another first-year acting student. He was still trying to match everyone’s name to their faces and this one’s was… something that escaped him.

James coughed and looked around at the quiet hall. Earlier it had been filled with the hustle and bustle of all disciplines as they chattered and worked, but now there were only a handful of other people. James prayed they hadn’t heard the last line.

“What are you talking about?”

The lean figure slipped into the chair across from James, folding his hands carefully on the surface. 

“Meredith came onto you, right?” He asked, peering at him from beneath his curls. 

_Meredith_. The girl he had been assigned in Gwendolyn’s class. Old money New York, pretty in a conventional, sexy, seductive sort of way. Everything he was supposed to like, and yet, didn’t. She had taken advantage of their solitude during a class work-session, in which they were stuck together in a practice room on the second floor. 

“... Yeah,” James answered slowly, not knowing where this was going. Perhaps he should play it up. If Meredith came onto him, that should give him some sort of credit amongst the other guys right. Maybe he should’ve told Oliver, just to see what his reaction would be.

The boy across from him smirked.

“Yeah, I heard her complaining to Filippa about it.”

Filippa…. Filippa… Tall, slim, with reading glasses. Keeps to herself. James nodded.

“Yeah, I just…” _How to phrase this?_ “... I’m just not in the mood to start anything. You know, so quickly. Into the year.”

The boy snorted, ran a hand through his curls, pushing them back out of his face. 

“Sure, James. Sure. That’s what I’d say too. If anyone asked.”

James suddenly noticed a flash of blue on his middle finger, a single nail painted painstakingly with cheap, sparkly polish. The only speck of color on the boy.

“Look, I’m sorry,” James coughed, once he had turned his attention back to the boy’s eyes and not his hands, “I’m horrible with names, could you…”

The boy laughed and flashed a toothy grin at James. He suddenly noticed a sharp canine that looked more like a fang than a human tooth. Who was this boy? Surely something otherworldly, or out of a dream. Something more like Ariel or Caliban to his gentle Ferdinand. 

“Alexander,” the boy answered. “Alexander Vass. And you’re…” he tilted his head, exaggeratedly, scanning James up and down under his scrutinizing gaze, “...the boy everyone wants to get with. But no one can. Why not?” 

James looked back down at his notes. He kept rejecting them. But why? That was the question. These girls that had flirted and flounced and rested their hands upon his knee in practice rooms, they were perfect. And James could not deny that. Convention should’ve dictated each one could’ve been the perfect love interest in his narrative, but… somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

Because he would be lying to them. And James, no matter how much he felt like Macbeth, reaching for some unattainable goal, he would not succumb to those conniving ways.

“Look, James,” Alexander continued. “It might be a mystery to everyone, but… I’ve been around the block a few times. I know when someone’s hiding something. And, buddy…” Alexander glances down at James once again, slowly, raking his gaze over his skin. “You might be a good actor, but I can see right through _this_ character.”

James shifted and felt a familiar red color rise to his cheeks. 

“Okay,” he relented, clenching his teeth to stop the wave of nausea churning in his stomach, “What do you want?”

Alexander leaned back in his chair, tipping it back so it balanced on two legs. He glanced around, dreamily, much to James’s irritation, dragging on the agonizing moment for much longer than he needed to.

“Not much. I just thought I’d ask. And extend my invitation.”

James narrowed his eyes.

“Invitation to what?”

Alexander smirked, knowingly.

“Well,” he mused, “my roommate’s recently switched rooms, I have lube and condoms, and there’s a full bottle of Scotch in my desk that I stole from Richard down the hall. You’re smart, aren’t you? You figure it out.”

And with that, the boy was gone. James watched him go, with a kind of enchanted wonder. How was he so confident for a student six weeks into the term? And why couldn’t James be like that? Unabashedly proud of who he was, not afraid of what others might think. James turned back to his paper, a jealous pang in his chest.

As he made his way back up towards the dorms hours later, a question kept circling around his head: _Why me?_ Alexander could have his pick of any boy on campus; there were certainly more like them, weren’t there? Someone who wasn’t so deep into the closet, someone who _wanted_ Alexander, someone who…

He found himself stopped in front of Alexander’s door. The soft thump of David Bowie hummed from behind the door, almost like a siren song, drawing him closer to a certain shipwreck. His own door was a couple of yards down, the room he shared with Oliver, who was probably sleeping. He could just continue on, pretend as if their scene had never happened. But something froze him to the spot.

In a hasty and impulsive decision, James threw the question out of his mind and decided not to care what Alexander’s intentions were. A couple of weeks later he chalked it up to his prettiness, as everyone always did. Alexander was just attracted to his Disney prince-like features. Alexander would claim years later it was just to hold over Meredith (“ha HA, _I_ slept with the boy _you_ wanted!”) but he’d never tell a soul after James walked in that night.

“Okay-” James closed the door behind him. “-But I have a few conditions.”

Alexander sat up from his messy bed, half dazed. James noticed a joint between his fingers.

“Which are?”

James set down his bag, running his hands through his hair. Oh, God, his heart was hammering against his chest.

“Okay, um, one: this doesn’t mean anything. I’m not gonna be your boyfriend or whatever after this and it doesn’t mean I love you or even like you for that matter. It’s just a hook-up. Just… sex.”

Alexander blinked.

“Right,” he mused sarcastically, “because I’m _hopelessly in love_ with you.”

“Two: this doesn’t mean I’m… gay.” The word felt inappropriate in his mouth, like it should be whispered, not spoken aloud.

Alexander sucked on his joint and blew a plume into the air.

“Doesn’t it?”

“No.” James regretted coming in here at all, suddenly wishing he was back in the bed next to Oliver’s, wallowing in his own guilt rather than unloading it all on Alexander’s dorm room floor. 

“I feel like it does, Jamie.”

“Don’t call me that-”

“Was _that_ a condition?” Alexander teased. “Because I think nicknames would be very hot.”

“Alexander.” James glared. He took a step back to the door, just in case he needed an escape route. 

“Fine, fine! I won’t call you Jamie, I won’t fall in love with you, and I won’t tell anybody you came into my room. Okay?”

James folded his hands under his arms and cast his eyes down to the floor. He felt Alexander shift himself off his bed and shuffle towards him, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the floorboards. 

“James.” Alexander’s voice came soft and close. “You don’t have to do this. If you don’t want to.”

“No. I… I do.”

Something else appeared in James’s line of vision: a smoking joint offered between Alexander’s fingers. 

“Here.”

James looked up to meet Alexander’s face, way too close. His black eyes were soft, no trace of a smirk. 

“Why?”

“You’re much too nervous. Just… relax.”

“No. No, I…” 

Without a word, Alexander lifted the joint and placed the end between James’s open lips. Smoke and sweetness mixed in his mouth as he took an involuntary breath in and let the drug run through his lungs. Every fear that had settled itself in James’s lungs since that first dress rehearsal of _Julius Caesar_ fluttered away, replaced with one line he had heard a million times quoted to him:

_This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man._

James kissed Alexander and they tumbled back onto the bed, limbs tangled in one another, and smoke wafting about their heads like halos. Tonight he was not Romeo, or Hamlet or even Macbeth. Not any of the roles he had ever played or read or hoped to be in the future. He was James. And tonight he would be simply himself. No poems, no words, no fate. Tomorrow he could always hide behind another character. And that somehow made it all more bearable.

~ 

James was grateful Oliver had offered to drive them back to his parents' house the next day. He was much too distracted to concentrate on the winding coastal roads, what with the last twenty-four hours constantly swimming about his head.

James had been the one to suggest skinny-dipping, mainly so he could see if the cold water could wash away any of the feelings of that night, or at least he was hoping it would. But seeing Oliver’s bare skin illuminated by the moonlight and watching his best friend howl with laughter and lying next to him in the sand as the waves rolled beneath them only made the feelings grow and poke at his heart. 

The fact that their clothes had been stolen was even worse. It’s as if the gods or something were enabling him as Oliver suggested they hide under one towel until they got back to their car and Oliver’s suitcase. And to top it all off, he had been given one of Oliver’s _band t-shirts._ James had to endure the rest of the trip home surrounded by the smell of Oliver’s cologne as if he was already his. 

As they pulled into the driveway, James decided to not think about it for the rest of their time together. Before he’d know it, Oliver would have to go back to Ohio and his father and James would be alone again in a house suffocating with words - he wouldn’t let one intrusive thought ruin this trip.

Of course, then Professor Farrow greeted them in the foyer, and that all went out the window. 

Four years earlier, at sixteen, James had finally been allowed to attend the annual poetry department party, instead of being holed up inside his room with only Shakespeare to keep him company. He had been looking forward to it for days, ever since he had returned home from school (that year having finally graduated to playing male parts in their spring production: Montano in their version of _Othello_ ). And when the fated evening came, James had reveled in the drunken disorder of it all. He had always felt more at home in chaos. Whether it was the rush of a dress rehearsal, or the final hours before dawn when he had often stayed up by lamplight to finish _Hamlet_ for the tenth time. It was often better to focus on the chaos around him, he decided, rather than deal with the tempest inside.

Professor Farrow’s ongoing cycles of students had always taken a liking to James, every since he was a child playing amongst the ornate bookshelves of his father’s office, and that liking only grew with age as he was able to start conversing intellectually with the poets that fluttered in and out of the classes year by year. And James liked being around them. But after hours of listening to increasingly drunken students debate the idiosyncrasies of Keats versus Woodsworth, James retired to the study, where he pulled out a well-loved copy of _The Complete Works_ and flipped through the pages.

Shakespeare had never failed to center himself. When he needed to relax, he often found himself whispering the words of _All the World’s a Stage_ , or _Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow_ just to hear the trip and fall of the words against his tongue. When he felt like he would fall asleep well before he had finished school work, or when he desperately wanted to hole himself in his room rather than face the world, the rousing words of _Saint Crispin’s Day_ boiled in his blood and forced him to push through. _Titus Andronicus_ helped him channel his anger, _Tempest_ lessened his grudges of the world, and when he wanted to laugh he slipped back into the easy comfort of Beatrice and Benedick’s bickering as they fell completely and hopelessly for each other.

As the party raged on around him, he settled for the first scenes of _Romeo and Juliet_ , familiar and cliche, but still beautiful. It was a play he had read a hundred times, at least. Some in English classes, some in the soft glow of the California sun against his bedroom window when he had nothing else to do but waste away the day in the city of Verona. Romeo entered and James felt the longing urge to play the Montague someday on stage. 

“ _Ay me! Sad hours seem long,”_ he whispered to himself, leaning over the desk, “ _Was that my father that went hence so fast?”_

“I don’t know,” a drunken voice slurred behind him, “But I think he’s in the kitchen if you’re looking for him.”

James whirled around. One of his father's students stood in the doorway, a tall and lean figure dressed in a yellow shirt. _Malvolio,_ James thought, _and yellow stockings_. He held a glass of champagne in his hand, but James suspected instantly that it was not the first one of the night. 

“Oh thanks,” he mumbled, “I wasn’t, but thanks.”

The student - _Malvolio_ \- stepped inside and closed the door. James had never really bothered to learn any of the students' names, and his father was notorious amongst the department for purposefully referring to each as their last name, which didn’t help at this moment to label the figure coming into the room. 

Somewhere in the next few minutes, during a jumbled conversation about the cliches of Romeo, Malvolio brushed a hand through James’s hair and kissed him. James gasped and fell right against the bookshelf, tasting wine and chocolate on the student’s lips. A hand went up his shirt as he grabbed at the bright yellow fabric to steady himself. 

He shouldn’t have been doing it, he thought in the moment, but _fuck_ did it feel good. A thousand fireworks exploded in his mind, sirens and alarms ringing in his ears, somewhere he thought he heard cello music but was quickly distracted when a hand grabbed a fistful of his hair.

It was complete bliss. To be kissing a boy in his father’s study, surrounded by beautiful words, the taste of alcohol and wonder on his lips. It was dreadfully poetic. And James suddenly wished Shakespeare had written something like this, just so he could stay up in his bed, reading the words over and over again.

But the Shakespearean ending came crashing in when the door creaked open and he was pushed away. Malvolio turned expertly to the desk, where _the Complete Works_ still sat, open to Act I. He flipped the page without a second thought, ghost of a smile the only thing betraying any of the last five minutes.

Professor Farrow wasn’t an idiot. No self-respecting expert on poetry could be blind to such feelings and events as what transpired in the study the night of the party. James could see his eyes darken the second he saw the two of them alone in the room, his son gasping and disheveled, still supporting himself against the books. When Professor Farrow dismissed Malvolio, James’s heart leapt into his throat. He didn’t know if he could bear the kind of talk expected of this moment, so he cast his eyes down to the floor, hoping his father would see it hadn’t been his fault. 

But Professor Farrow eyed his son and, after digging through a desk drawer, slid a leatherbound notebook and fountain pen to him. 

“I find these sorts of feelings are often best expressed through verse,” he mused, “I expect to read some of your own words tomorrow.”

Four years later, Professor Farrow welcomed Oliver into the house, took one look at James’s face, and said in a way that made James’s blood boil:

“Have you thought about taking _poetry_ up again, James?”

Oliver turned immediately to James with a bemused smile.

“I didn’t know you wrote poetry,” he said, with such earnest James knew exactly what he would ask next. 

“I don’t,” James cut in before the question could be spoken. It wasn’t a lie. Because those short stanzas he had scrawled out in the early hours as the party raged on around him weren’t poems. They were confessions, never meant to be seen by anyone. Certainly never meant to be seen by Oliver.

God, he hoped his father didn’t know where he had stashed that notebook.

James led Oliver up to his room so they could finally get changed into actual clothes, making sure not to pass by the study. He came to the decision that he’d have to talk to Alexander once school started again. No, not just talk. 

Alexander, weed, and one night without Oliver. That would help, wouldn’t it?

~

It didn’t. And Alexander saw through him the moment they crashed onto the mattress, breathless. James felt the familiar wave of resentment creep over him. Of _course_ , he wouldn’t be able to forget Oliver. How could he be so stupid to think he would?

So he tried to live with it, even though he couldn’t help the ache in his chest whenever he saw Oliver talking to someone else, or laughing, or really doing anything. It was absolute agony. The only comfort he got was when the two of them were alone, and James could pretend Oliver was nothing more to him than his _best friend._ James was always good at acting, fooling himself could be simple enough.

James stopped going out with the others on Saturday nights, mainly because there was no one else he’d want to spend it with than Oliver, but oftentimes he found himself detached from his roommate and forced to spend time with Wren or Filippa or, God forbid, _Meredith_ , while Oliver flirted with some girl at the bar. He could spend time with the girls when he wanted to, so he’d rather avoid the whole ordeal by getting ahead on homework for the week. And when he had finished that, he sat up, rereading _Hamlet_ and annotating in his notebook all the instances of subtext between Hamlet and Horatio, and maybe he should start thinking about between Hamlet and Laertes if he ever needed to bring up in a paper on this topic, and what about Hamlet and Rosencrantz? Or Guildenstern? Or-

A knock came at the door and James looked up. 

Oliver stood awkwardly on the threshold, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His feet were wandering, Janes noticed, as they often did when he was nervous. But… what would he have to be nervous about?

“Hey,” Oliver started, his speech was a little slurred, like he had been drinking, “I was over at the Bore’s Head.”

“Yeah, I assumed. You have fun?”

Oliver’s head bopped in reply.

“Yeah. Yeah, actually, there was this group of choral students. And I started talking to one of them and we really hit it off.” He glanced up with a cheeky grin. James almost grinned too; just seeing him smile was enough to warm his heart. 

“Great.” He looked back to the text. “You wanna help me? I’m finding all the similarities in the interactions between Horatio and -”

“Um, actually, James?” 

James looked up again. Oliver was shifting his weight again, this time actively turning his feet with his movement. 

“Look, it’s Saturday night. And tomorrow’s Sunday… And it’s like the one day that she doesn’t have rehearsal in the morning so…” 

James suddenly noticed a second figure in the hall behind him: a girl with bright gold hair and a black sweater. She peered curiously at the pictures on the wall, swaying gently with some invisible breeze. And suddenly it dawned on him, before Oliver even had to say it.

“I was just wondering… could you… clear the room, James?”

James’s heart caught in his throat. His eyes raked over Oliver’s face, blushing and flushed from the cold. An image flashed in his mind of what would go down that night, in this room, if he left: that girl with her hands all over Oliver’s body, and what was worse, his hands all over hers. James wanted to refuse. Snap at Oliver for bringing this unknown _girl_ into their space, the room that they shared, their sacred sanctuary from the rest of the world. And why the hell couldn’t they go to _her_ room? OR better even, why the hell couldn’t Oliver turn her away and spend the night with him, reciting sonnets to each other until they fell asleep and maybe if James got his courage up maybe it wouldn’t just be sonnets but…

James took a breath and averted his eyes from Oliver. With one fluid motion, he scooped up his papers and pens and books and made his way to the door.

“Yeah. Yeah. Sure. It’s fine. It’s totally… fine! Have fun!” The words came out too cheerful to be genuine, James noticed, but Oliver would never give any weight to it. Sober Oliver was oblivious to everything, Drunk Oliver even more so. He’d forget about the entire interaction come the morning, or come a couple of minutes when he was much too concerned with this girl to think about his best friend.

The girl flashed him a small smile as Oliver beckoned her into the room. 

“Thanks, James,” he chirped, “I owe you one!” 

_That doesn’t matter_ , James thought with a swell of pain, _Because there’s nothing you would give me that I want._

As they closed the door behind James, he could catch a glimpse of the two of them wrapping their arms around each other, giggling as their lips got closer and closer.

And then James was all alone, fumbling with his books. Hamlet and Horatio didn’t fit anymore, not after all that. Before, he could pretend that one day, maybe next year, they might be able to do this show and be cast in these parts, and maybe it would all come true. But now, after seeing _her,_ every hope of that flew from James’s mind.

His feet took him to Alexander’s room before his mind had even finished processing what to do. 

“James!” Alexander exclaimed when he opened the door. He was lounging on a pile of laundry in the corner of the room, which James suspected had never once been washed and acted more as a seat now, than actual clothes. A window was open, and after smelling the smoke wafting around the room, James could infer that Alexander was getting high again. “ _What’s the new news at the new court?_ ”

James didn’t answer and instead flopped against the laundry, shivering from the November air blowing in from the cracked window. He hugged his books close to himself and held out a hand for a joint. Alexander obliged. Soon a haze fluttered around the room, an air percolated with smoke rings from Alexander and long plumes from James. He was grateful to let Alexander take the brunt of the conversation, complaining to James about his newest problem with the dining service, or philosophizing about a particular sonnet that he had come across, or contemplating a new way to read the scenes in _Henry IV_ to make them gayer. Alexander would’ve liked to hear about Hamlet and Horatio, but James couldn’t bring himself to open his notebook without thinking of him. And her. 

Alexander must’ve seen a dark look cross his face because he nudged James with his foot and asked, “What’s wrong with you? Someone misuse a comma?”

James shook his head, not even bothering to laugh at the joke.

“It’s Oliver.”

“Ahhhh. _Sir Oliver_ .” Alexander hummed. “ _O sweet Oliver, O brave Oliver, Leave me not behind thee…”_

“Shut up. I’m serious.” 

“Sorry. What happened?”

So James told him. Not about the feeling that had settled into James’s chest months earlier amongst waves and sand and _Pericles_ ; Alexander had already heard that speech, many times before. No, James told him all about the girl. The girl who was probably occupying Oliver’s mind right at that moment, her hands through his hair, her lips on his. James described how nauseous the thought of her made him feel, and how it hurt even worse to know that Oliver had wanted it. To know that Oliver had already made the decision between her and James. And he had chosen her. Just like he always would.

Alexander listened with soft nods and smoke rings every so often. And when James was done, he placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and handed him the joint again. As James sucked on the smoke again and let it bloom in his lungs, he suddenly felt the warmth in his stomach again. If he couldn’t have Oliver, perhaps he needed something else.

And perhaps that something else was right in front of him.

Alexander let out a small noise when James kissed him, halfway between surprise and laughter. They stayed like that for several seconds - Alexander reaching up to cup James’s cheek with his hand, James working his fingers haphazardly between Alexander’s curls - until Alexander pushed him away and laughed softly.

“Thanks, James, but…” he sighed. “You don’t want to do this.”

“No. I mean, yes! Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.” Alexander's smile melted away as he looked to James again. “Trust me. I’ve been here before. And as much as you hate Oliver right now, you’ll just hate yourself more in the morning.”

“No, but…”

But the words disappeared from his tongue before he could say them. He knew deep down that Alexander was right. He knew deep down that he should have had that thought too. And deep down he hated himself for not coming to this conclusion sooner. 

Tears welled in James’s eyes without him noticing as he found himself leaning against Alexander’s shoulder. The ache in his heart grew and grew until it consumed his lungs and his stomach and soon every breath he took hurt and every movement made it worse.

“Then what do I do?” he sobbed through ragged breaths. “I can’t keep living like this! I just want it to stop! But how do I stop it if… if he won’t… How do I stop feeling like this?”

Alexander wrapped an arm around James’s shoulder.

“I feel sick all the time,” he continued, “like I want to hurl every time he looks at me. And my head hurts and I can’t even get out of bed sometimes when he’s not there and I feel hot and sticky and I just… Tell me it stops! Tell me there’s a cure! I just… I just want it… I just want it all to _stop.”_

“I’m sorry.” 

James sobbed again, uncontrollably into Alexander’s sweatshirt, grabbing fistfuls of the fabric to ground himself. Alexander sighed, ran a comforting hand through James’s hair.

_“Love is merely a madness and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do, and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is…”_

Alexander trailed off then, and James didn’t know if it was from a memory lapse or a sudden epiphany.

“Is what, Alexander?” he prompted even though he knew the rest of the line.

Alexander coughed and shifted so James was resting against his chest.

_“The reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love, too.”_

James nodded, still sniffling into Alexander’s clothes. They sat there for the rest of the night, not saying a word, sometimes brushing away tears, passing the joint between them like an offering to Aphrodite or maybe Venus, or some other love god who knew more than they did. And when morning came and Alexander helped him face the room again, James came to the same realization again and again. As much as it ached inside his chest, he knew he’d just have to live with it. Until he could finally find himself free of the madness.

Or until Oliver himself fell soft and slow, a little bit every day.

**Author's Note:**

> All of this is because my bestie and I stayed up until 4:30 AM discussing these characters and then I was inspired. Jaaaaaames babyyyyyy we love you. 
> 
> \- Quotes are from Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and As You Like It.  
> \- Alexander and James hook up first in First-Year, then at the beginning of Third-Year. Oliver and James go to California together before Third-Year, which is when James falls in love (y'all know when Oliver falls in love).  
> \- I don't know if I love Professor Farrow or hate him. You decide.


End file.
